Gov. Carnahan speaks

by Mel Carnahan

As far as anyone can tell, a so-called “partial birth” abortion has never occurred in Missouri. This may be partly because this procedure and all other late-term abortion procedures have been banned in our state since 1979.

Nonetheless, this year Missouri legislators once again found it necessary to spend countless hours and tax dollars debating the “issue” of partial birth abortion, as they have done in each of the past several years.

This year, our state legislature spent more time on the subject of abortion than it did on improving education, on fighting drugs, on fostering economic expansion and job growth, or on protecting children from abuse and neglect. In fact, this year, the legislature spent more time on abortion than they spent on any other issue.

Abortion is a high profile and highly emotional issue. And, to most Missourians, myself included, a so-called “partial birth” abortion is a gruesome and unacceptable procedure. Although it’s already banned under Missouri law, many Missouri legislators want very badly to be on record opposing the procedure. But in their rush to stop a heinous type of abortion that isn’t performed here, they passed a bill far more extreme and dangerous than merely another partial birth abortion ban.

The bill the legislature sent to my desk bans virtually all abortions back to the sixth week of pregnancy. It contains no exceptions for rape or incest. It contains no exception for an abortion necessary to prevent a woman from suffering severe and permanent damage to her health such as stroke or paralysis. And it makes any physician who performs, any health care worker who assists in, and any woman who undergoes a banned abortion criminally liable for murder, which carries a sentence of up to life in prison.

It that’s not extreme enough, by inserting the ban into the criminal code instead of into Missouri’s abortion statutes, the legislature provided a legal defense to anyone who uses force (including deadly force) to prevent an abortion banned by the bill. (And just to be sure everyone knows that this legal defense would be available, the authors explicitly, and gratuitously, incorporated it into the bill itself.)

The person doesn’t even need to know for certain that a banned abortion is going to occur. He or she must only have a “reasonable belief” that it will occur. That is, if the person “reasonably believes” a banned abortion is going to be performed, then the person will have the right to use violence to try to prevent the anticipated abortion, even if he or she is mistaken.

I vetoed this bill because it is clearly unconstitutional, extreme and dangerous. It is not merely a ban on partial birth abortion as its authors claim. It is a far-reaching and deceptive attempt to ban practically all abortions by characterizing and defining them as partial birth abortions.

You don’t have to take my word that this is a dangerous bill. Newspapers across the country have already written about Missouri’s new “extremist” and “radical” abortion law. Health care and legal scholars throughout the nation have called for its reversal.

Further confirmation of these concerns was received within hours of the legislature’s override of my veto. A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order preventing the new law from going into effect because he believes there are sufficient grounds to warrant a trial on whether the law violates the constitutional rights of Missouri women.

Even more significantly, several days later, a three-judge panel of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that extreme anti-abortion laws in Nebraska, Kansas and Iowa similar to Missouri’s new law are unconstitutional. But it’s important to note that Missouri’s new law is even more extreme than the three laws the court just struck down. For example, abortions banned by the Missouri law are even earlier than the abortions banned by the laws of the other three states. And Missouri’s law is the only one that provides a legal defense for use of violence.

Some legislators voted for this bill and for the override of my veto because they feared a political backlash if they voted against a measure its authors so successfully portrayed as necessary to prevent the abortion of infants in the final moments of delivery. Others clearly intended to use the bill, along with the emotionally charged imagery of partial birth abortions, as an opportunity to ban almost all abortions and make women who have even a first trimester abortion guilty of murder.

Whatever their individual motivations, the end result was a bad bill that I could not in good conscience sign. Instead, I vetoed the bill and again called on the legislature to send me a new, constitutionally sound bill that bans only partial birth abortions (which is what the authors of the bill claim they want to do) and which includes a health exception as required by the Untied States Supreme Court. I have, for the past three years, repeatedly told the authors and other anti-choice legislators that I would sign such a bill as a way of resolving this issue and enabling the legislature to move on to other pressing needs. Unfortunately, anti-choice legislators have thus far refused to send me such a bill, no doubt because it does not allow them to achieve their true objective of criminalizing all or most abortions.

Even most pro-choice Missourians, like myself, strongly object to the “partial birth” abortion procedure. And I am willing to sign a bill banning partial birth abortions even though the procedure is already illegal in Missouri. However, I am not willing to sign a bill that is intended to overturn Roe v. Wade.

As a personal matter, I have always opposed abortion. And, as governor, I have fought hard for ways to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies so that fewer abortions would occur. But I have also always supported the right of a woman to make this highly personal decision for herself, without government intrusion. I have no regrets about opposing this bill, even though I lost the legislative battle. In fact, it is my obligation as governor to oppose bad legislation regardless of political pressures. And it is my responsibility to tell the truth about what’s in a bill even when some people don’t want to hear it.

Now that the matter is in the courts, perhaps the legislature is ready to move on to other issues like improving schools and fighting crime. Crime, unlike partial birth abortion, actually does occur in Missouri.